Can I pass a broadcast between subnets?

[jotech]

Strange question I know. And I figure broadcasts are designed to only be sent over one subnet and defeats the purpose of seperating into multiple vlans.

We have a few KVM switches on our network (one IP address is 192.168.10.10/24). I am connecting to the KVM through a client on my computer (my computer is in a different subnet with the address 192.168.50.10/24). I have set up firewall rules so I can access the KVM just fine. Everything works as expected there.

The KVM client I run on my computer has the ability to display a list of all known KVMs on the network to allow for easy selection without having to type in the IP address. I can see all the KVMs if I connect my computer to the first subnet. But because I am on a different subnet the list of known KVMs isn't populated. Again, I can type in the IP address and connect. This would purely be a quality of life improvement.

I don't actually know how this works in the background, but I assume there is some broadcast being sent across the network. And it is not able to cross over the subnets. That would make sense. I have also contacted the supplier of the KVM client software to see if there is anything they can do on their side.

But I thought to ask here as well just in case there is any other way around this problem from the router side. Or I am being completely wrong about the broadcast being the cause of the issue.

[ww]

You could try this, and select "all services"  between the vlans. 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/Bonjour_Forwarding

[jotech]

Thank you for the quick reply.

Unfortunately this didn't work. I assume because the KVMs aren't using Bonjour, but that might be a question for the developers of the software.

[Brash]

Bonjour used mDNS, so it would only forward multicast frames.

It sounds like you KVM software might use a different discover method.

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

This will be a fundamental limitation in the design of the KVM.  Multicast discovery (which can work over different subnets) would have been the correct technology for this kind of feature.

[jotech]

Absolutely makes sense. As I said, I figured it was worth an ask just incase there was something magical I could do router side.